Girl Singer

2. Too Much Lovin'

Lulu Martine

My breath came in great racking sobs. The terror had seized my insides, and I lurched into movement on all fours, crawling toward the bathroom, trying to reach the toilet where I could throw up or shit or whatever seemed necessary.

The man overtook me and pulled me to my feet by one arm. “Bonnie, Bonnie,” he said tensely. “Don’t scream. Don’t scream.”

I nodded. He was hurting me with his grip on my elbow. Not badly, but his grip was tight, and I knew I couldn’t get away. I squirmed and made noises, but I didn’t scream. The man seemed huge, he towered over me and his strength seemed enormous. I didn’t struggle against his grip for fear he might strike me.

He shoved me toward the bathroom, letting me go. I almost fell but caught myself on the doorframe.

“Go in there,” he ordered me. “Wash your face. I’ll fetch your clothes so you can get dressed.” He looked back over at the bed. “Jesus, Bonnie, we gonna have to leave town—again! You gotta quit fucking these johns to death.”

I cried and gabbled something, putting my hands to my throat. I knew he was mad at me because the man was dead, and I wanted to show him that someone had tried to choke me. I was still afraid of him, but I wanted him to know that if this Bonnie had killed someone, maybe she had a reason?

He snorted, then made a motion like a lunge at me. I squeaked and got inside the bathroom, and he yanked the door closed behind me. “Stay in there, you stupid whore,” he said. “I’ll tell you when to come out.”

I stared at the girl in the mirrors. She looked as scared as I felt. I got the ring on the toilet seat up before I threw up. I caught water in my hand and rinsed out my mouth. I stared at my new face in the mirror.

I tried to think about my situation. My name is Bonnie Mae, and I’m a whore? And I’ve killed another one? One of my johns…? Too much sex….

I threw up in the sink this time and had to try to wash it down the little drain, but it was mostly just bile. I drank several handfuls of the cold liquid, and it helped me calm down.

The man outside must be my pimp. I’m a whore, and I have a pimp. My hands trembled, and I grabbed one in the other and tried to stop the shakes. The brain I had been admiring earlier for seeming to be quicker than the one my older male self used didn’t seem to be working at all now.

What had happened to me? I had tried to end my life, and now I had a new life, but… I’m a woman and a whore, and I just killed one of my johns….

“G-g-guh-!” I couldn’t speak, either. The man had called me a dummy, and it was true. Maybe I had brain damage….

My mind spiraled out of control. Was I lying in some hospital bed on life support while my brain died from the effects of the poison I had consumed?

Or was the life I thought I had had just some delusion? A lot of prostitutes are addicts on some pretty nasty drugs. What was I on?

I used the water to try to clean up my face. There was only the one tap, no hot water, and cold water was not going to remove my makeup. I found a washcloth and touched it to a big bar of white soap beside the tap. I used that to clean around my mouth and cheeks and carefully beneath my eyes, but I would need something else to get rid of the eye makeup entirely.

I’d had a wife, a mother, sisters. I knew I needed cold cream or makeup pads or something similar — nothing like that in the bathroom.

*

The door suddenly opening scared a squeak out of me, but it was only my pimp, throwing some clothing at me. “Get dressed, don’t take too long, we’ve got to get out of here.” He shut the door again.

I picked up the clothing. A pair of silk panties with lace. A clumsy-looking brassiere. A silk dress, black with figured flowers that looked as if they had been painted on. Hosiery, silk again, with a seam. Silk? If I’m a whore, I’m apparently an expensive one. Why the hell am I in such a dump of a hotel?

I used the washcloth between my legs where I had discovered some stickiness I didn’t want to think about, then I pulled up my panties and settled them in place. The bra was harder to figure out; I was more familiar with taking one off someone else than putting one on myself.

It also fit, after I discovered how to lift my breasts and settle them into the cups. I felt some relief too from the wobbling and swaying and pulling of my skin from unsupported breasts. My girls seemed more abundant than average, but maybe it was just that I wasn’t used to them being attached to me.

“Bonnie Mae,” said the man, “you better be dressed when I open the door.”

I made gargling noises. He frightened me so badly. I pulled the dress over my head and down past my breasts, so it settled around my hips as the door opened.

He smiled at me. “Good girl,” he said. “Don’t bother with your stockings. Here’s your puhss and shoes, put them on, and let’s get out of here.”

Puhss? Oh, purse. It was the first time I had really noticed his accent. Tennessee? Georgia?

There was another garment sticking out of the purse, a garter belt? I pushed it down and folded the stockings and put them inside too. The shoes had buckles and looked like the sort of footwear dancers wore on stage, with a wide, clunky heel of two or more inches. Could I walk in those?

I put them on, and they fit, and I stumbled only a little, staggering out of the bathroom. The man caught me. “Shit, Bonnie,” he said. “Don’t take on so. He was a piece of crap and good riddance.”

He actually gave me a quick hug and patted my hair, cooing to me. “I know it warn’t your fault he died, honeypie. He was old and fat, and you were just too much lovin’.”

He brushed his lips against my forehead, and I realized I had been kissed. It did a lot to ease my fear of the man. Maybe he’d been mean to me because he was scared, too?

I was still sniffling a bit. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My hair was a rat’s nest, and I still had raccoon eyes. What did it matter? I knew I must be pretty, and it bothered me to see my face all puffy and smeared. I didn’t think too much about why it bothered me, though.

He pushed me ahead of him. “Go on, sweetcakes. I paid the desk man not to call the cops for an hour. We’ll go out the backstairs and be on the way to Kansas City before they quit settin’ on their hands.”

He seemed almost a different person than the one who had called me a cunt, but he slapped me on the ass hard enough to sting through my thin dress, and I must have jumped a foot with a startled, “Guk!” sound. He laughed.

I could feel the warmth of his handprint on my butt cheek. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant. I wondered if he would do it again.

*

My brain still wasn’t working, and I allowed him to push me ahead of him, out the door and down a hallway. He opened another door and went first down a narrow flight of stairs, towing me behind him this time. “Don’t trip on the stairs, honeypie,” he warned me. I managed, despite the heels, to stay upright.

Two more flights, another door, and we came out in an alley beside a loading platform. It felt like a clammy early morning of a summer in someplace where the day will be hot and humid. My dress clung to my thighs, and I kept using my free hand to pull it loose so it would hang. This was important to me for some reason.

He seemed in a much more cheerful mood, and I wondered why. He was even humming something under his breath. I recognized the tune: “When You Wish Upon a Star,” a Disney song I used to hear as a child. I opened my mouth to sing along, but he made a shushing motion with his hand.

He looked both ways, up and down the alley, then he seized me and pulled me close. “Babydoll,” he said. He pulled me up on my toes and bent his head to kiss me, right on the lips this time. His tongue insisted on getting inside my mouth, and I was so surprised, I let him.

The kiss went through me like electricity. He had one hand on my ass where he had slapped me, and he clenched that. I wanted to squeal; the feelings were so intense. My lips had already felt bruised, and they were very sensitive.

I felt warmth in my—my nipples, my crotch, even my nose and ears. My body was enjoying what he was doing, and my brain was just a spectator. I could feel his excitement, too. One piece of evidence hard and warm against my thigh.

Oh, gross, I managed to think, but my body wanted to rub against it. I heard myself giggle as he broke off the kiss.

“What was that for, Alvin, I hear you ask?” he said. He laughed. Squeezed me tight, gave me another peck on the lips, and took off down the alley, again towing me behind him.

I felt giddy and dizzy, my hair falling in my face, and I kept pulling at my dress to keep it from clinging. I stumbled, and he caught me, set me on my feet again, and we went at a more reasonable pace. He was singing again, quietly. This time it was harder to place the tune.

Between giggles—I couldn’t seem to stop them—I tried humming along. Finally, I had it. “We’re in the money,” I sang, feeling happy that I had figured it out. “We’ve got a lot of what—.” I wasn’t having any trouble at all with the words, and I didn’t seem to think that was strange.

His hand going over my mouth stopped me. “Sh, sh,” he said. He shook his head. “Bonnie Mae, sometimes I forget you ain’t completely right in the head.” He laughed softly and uncovered my mouth to kiss me again. My body wanted to kiss back and wiggle in his arms, but I resisted that.

I’m really a guy, I told myself. I can’t be enjoying myself kissing other men. But I was feeling good again; still a little scared but sort of roller-coaster scared. As long as Alvin, if that was his name, had an arm around me, I felt—safe? He still seemed large and powerful but no longer scary.

We turned the corner onto a street at the end of the alley and walked along, arm and arm. I looked up at his face, my eyes were about level with his shoulder, and he grinned down at me, then put his other hand to his mouth, a finger on his lips in a shushing gesture.

I heard myself giggle, but I was still mystified as to what had changed his mood. And mine.

He treats me like a moron, I thought. Maybe I am. But even that bit of depressing reverie did not quash the occasional tingle of excitement. I didn’t know where we were going, but Alvin was happy, so…Bonnie Mae was delighted. And I was Bonnie Mae.

*

I wasn’t in charge, and we went where Alvin wanted to, and I couldn’t resist looking at him frequently. Like I had to check his mood if it changed or something. But I did have time to look around and what I saw mystified me.

It was as if we had wandered onto a movie set. The cars and clothes all reminded me of old black-and-white movies, things that would star tough guys like Humphrey Bogart and Bugsy Siegel. No, wait, Bugsy Siegel was a real tough guy, not an actor. But like that.

There weren’t many people on the streets or cars moving, but they all had a look. The cars had bulbous outlines, and almost all of them were black. I remembered cars like that from when I was a kid, but those were old then, and these were new, now.

The women all wore dresses that were at least mid-calf, like the one I wore, or even longer. Most of the men had on double-breasted suits or rough work clothes that still looked old-fashioned. Almost everyone had a hat, men and women.

A lot of people I saw were black, and they were all dressed in work clothes, not one of them in a suit or a nice dress. On one corner we passed, a black teenager offered to shine our shoes. Across the street, another black man unloaded bales of papers from a truck in front of a genuine newsstand like I didn’t remember having seen in twenty years.

It seemed I had not only changed body but changed times too. I’d been born in 1941 myself, five months before Pearl Harbor, exactly. I suddenly wanted to ask Alvin the date but knew I would never be able to get a coherent question out.

We passed the newsstand, and I made another awful discovery. I couldn’t read. Oh, I recognized some of the letters in the big headlines on the newspapers, A, B, and C mostly, and a few others, but there was not one word that made sense to me. Maybe A, I suppose.

I made a strangled noise, and Alvin looked down at me. “You okay, honeypie?” he asked.

“N-n-no,” I managed to say. “I-I-uh-I-.”

He shook his head and tapped me on the nose with a fingertip. “Sh, sh, sh,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. Not your fault his heart couldn’t take your good lovin’. You too much woman for him, but I’m sure he went out with a smile…well, no, he didn’t, hmm.”

He grinned at me. “To tell the truth, from his expression, it must have hurt like a sumbitch….”

That hadn’t been what I was trying to tell him, but now I was weeping again. My emotional buttons seemed too easily pushed. “Sh, sh, sh,” said Alvin.

Some guy in work clothes stopped right in front of us. “She gonna be all right, mister?” he asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Alvin. “She’s upset—she’s just upset because her cat died.”

My cat died? My brain was off the rails for sure now. I wailed and put my face against Alvin’s chest, bawling for a cat I was pretty sure didn’t even exist. Poor Fluffy.

*

Next thing I knew, Alvin was loading me into the front seat of a car. “Bonnie,” he was saying, “Get your hands and feet inside so I can close the door.”

I snatched my limbs in and looked up at him with my mouth hanging open. “Good girl,” he said and closed the door then ran around to the other side to climb in behind the wheel. He laughed. “Bonnie, you are something else, honeypie.” He shook his head. “Scoot over here,” he patted the seat beside him.

It was a big old bench-style seat covered in worn cloth and faded leather. I scooted over, and he hugged me up close then kissed me again.

I wanted to turn my face away from his kisses, but instead, I kept leaning into them. Despite myself, they made me feel good. Sooner or later, I would have to stop trying to think of myself as a man. My crinkled up nipples and the warmth I felt between my legs were certainly evidence against the theory.

He started the engine with a key and a foot pedal. It coughed into life, and he leaned out the driver’s side window to look behind us before easing the clutch and merging with the still sparse traffic. When he went to change gears, the shift lever was on the steering column, and he had to use the clutch.

“We’ll run by our doss, grab out stuff and go, okay, baby?”

I had no idea, so I nodded. Doss? It was a word I hadn’t heard since the hippie era.

He laughed, and I giggled.

“You can sing now,” he said.

I looked at him blankly.

“We’re in the money…” he began, and I took over. I didn’t even know that I knew all the words. It was a song about the Depression ending and having enough money to pay the rent and even loan a bit to a friend. It was a happy tune, and I discovered I was dancing in place, tapping my feet and swinging my shoulders to the rhythm. I hit all the notes, too.

He shook his head when I finished. “How come you never, ever stutter when you’re singing?” he asked.

“Ada-ada-ada?” I gabbled. Damn. That didn’t even sound like what I had tried to say.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said, kissing me on the forehead. “You’re beautiful, you sing like a bird, and you fuck like a catamount. But that’s the second old fart in six months died on you.” He laughed. “That witch in the swamp sold you to me wasn’t lying when she said you were too much lovin’ for some men.”

Witch? Sold me!? My toes curled up, and a flash of heat went through me. I giggled and wiggled against him. Something inside me liked the idea of being sold. I am so fucked, I thought. Well, yeah, another part of me remarked, that’s your line of work now.

He squeezed me. “You’re my meal ticket, honeypie.” He kissed me on the forehead again. “You know how much that old fart had in his wallet? Seven hundred dollars. Even after giving the deskman a double sawbuck, we’ve got enough to buy a new car, and a better one than this piece-of-shit Dodge.”

We were definitely not in 2020 anymore. I laughed out loud. My pimp had ripped off the corpse of the man I had fucked to death, and now we had to get out of the city before the cops found me. I laughed again before bursting into tears.

*